Thank you so much. Thank
you. Everybody have a seat. Well, thank you, Edith, for your
introduction. Edith and I go a long way back. In law school we served
on the law review together. I will not say who edited who. I will say
she looks exactly the same. And I do not. And it's upsetting.

Edith, in your career,
you’ve stood up for citizens and communities. I was proud to nominate
you -- first as a commissioner, and then as chairwoman of the FTC. You
are doing an outstanding job, as are your fellow commissioners, and we
very much appreciate your outstanding efforts.

And Edith’s story, from
the daughter of Mexican immigrants to the head of the FTC, we see a
central part of the American story. And that's worth remembering at a
time when those are issues that we're debating all the time. It's a
reminder that what makes this country special is the incredible talent
that we draw from all around the world and somehow it all merges into
something unique: America.

To Edith, to the fellow
commissioners, to all of you who work at the FTC -- thanks for welcoming
me. I’m told I may be the first President to come to the FTC in nearly
80 years, since FDR in -- first time apparently since FDR in 1937, which
is a little surprising. I mean, you’d think like one of the Presidents
would just come here by accident. They ended up in the wrong building,
we're already at the FTC.

Anyway, I figured it was
time to correct that. Plus, I know sometimes your name confuses folks.
They don’t always understand what your mission is. One person who does
understand is David Letterman. A few months ago he thanked you for
standing up to the companies that were trying to pitch a new weight-loss
product -- “caffeine-laced undergarments.” I’m actually not making this
up. You ruled that these products were “not substantiated by scientific
evidence.” So, thank you for saving America from caffeine-laced
undergarments. These companies owed consumers a refund.

And that was just the
latest example, because, as Edith said, you recently celebrated your
100th anniversary. And I want to thank you for 100 proud years of
protecting American consumers. I also want to thank some of the members
of Congress who are here today and many of our partners from not just
government but the private sector, and consumer and privacy and advocacy
groups.

Next week, just up the
street, I will deliver the State of the Union address. And it will be a
chance to talk about America’s resurgence, including something we can
all be proud of, which is the longest stretch of private sector job
growth in American history -- 58 straight months and more than 11
million new jobs. In the speech, I’m going to focus on how we can build
on that progress and help more Americans feel that resurgence in their
own lives, through higher wages and rising incomes and a growing middle
class.

But since I’ve only got
two years left in this job, I tend to be impatient and I didn’t want to
wait for the State of the Union to start sharing my plans. So I’ve been
traveling across the country rolling out some of the ideas that we’ll be
talking about, a little bit of a sneak preview.

And in the 21st century --
in this dizzying age of technology and innovation -- so much of the
prosperity that we seek, so many of the jobs that we create, so much of
the opportunity that’s available for the next generation depends on our
digital economy. It depends on our ability to search and connect and
shop and do business and create and discover and learn online, in
cyberspace. And as we’ve all been reminded over the past year,
including the hack of Sony, this extraordinary interconnection creates
enormous opportunities, but also creates enormous vulnerabilities for us
as a nation and for our economy, and for individual families.

So this week, I’m laying
out some new proposals on how we can keep seizing the possibilities of
an Information Age, while protecting the security and prosperity and
values that we all cherish. Today, I’m focusing on how we can better
protect American consumers from identity theft and ensure our privacy,
including for our children at school. And then tomorrow, at the
Department of Homeland Security, I’ll focus on how we can work with the
private sector to better defend ourselves against cyber-attacks. And
final, on Wednesday, in Iowa, I’ll talk about how we can give families
and communities faster, cheaper access to broadband so they can succeed
in the digital economy.

But I wanted to start
here, at the FTC, because every day you take the lead in making sure
that Americans, their hard-earned money and their privacy are protected,
especially when they go online. And these days, that’s pretty much for
everything: managing our bank accounts, paying our bills, handling
everything from medical records to movie tickets, controlling our homes
-- smart houses, from smart phones. Secret Service does not let me do
that. But I know other people do.

And with these benefits
come risks -- major companies get hacked; America’s personal
information, including financial information, gets stolen. And the
problem is growing, and it costs us billions of dollars. In one survey,
9 out of 10 Americans say they feel like they’ve lost control of their
personal information. In recent breaches, more than 100 million
Americans have had their personal data compromised, like credit card
information. When these cyber criminals start racking up charges on
your card, it can destroy your credit rating. It can turn your life
upside down. It may take you months to get your finances back in
order. So this is a direct threat to the economic security of American
families and we’ve got to stop it.

If we’re going to be
connected, then we need to be protected. As Americans, we shouldn’t
have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business.
And that’s why, since I took office, we’ve been working with the private
sector to strengthen our cyber defenses. A few months ago, we launched
our BuySecure initiative. The federal government and companies across
the country are moving to stronger chip-and-pin technology for credit
cards. Here at the FTC, you’re working with credit bureaus so that
victims can recover their stolen identities faster, and every day you’re
helping consumers with IdentityTheft.gov

So today I’m announcing
new steps to protect the identities and privacy of the American people.
Let me list them for you. First, we’re introducing new legislation to
create a single, strong national standard so Americans know when their
information has been stolen or misused. Right now, almost every state
has a different law on this, and it’s confusing for consumers and it’s
confusing for companies -- and it’s costly, too, to have to comply to
this patchwork of laws. Sometimes, folks don’t even find out their
credit card information has been stolen until they see charges on their
bill, and then it’s too late. So under the new standard that we’re
proposing, companies would have to notify consumers of a breach within
30 days. In addition, we’re proposing to close loopholes in the law so
we can go after more criminals who steal and sell the identities of
Americans —- even when they do it overseas.

Second, I’m pleased that
more banks, credit card issuers and lenders are stepping up and
equipping Americans with another weapon against identity theft, and
that’s access to their credit scores, free of charge. This includes
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, USAA, State Employees’ Credit Union,
Ally Financial. Some of them are here today. I want to thank them for
their participation. This means that a majority of American adults will
have free access to their credit score, which is like an early warning
system telling you that you’ve been hit by fraud so you can deal with it
fast. And we’re encouraging more companies to join this effort every
day.

Third, we’re going to be
introducing new legislation -— a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
Working with many of you -— from the private sector and advocacy groups
-- we’ve identified some basic principles to both protect personal
privacy and ensure that industry can keep innovating. For example, we
believe that consumers have the right to decide what personal data
companies collect from them and how companies use that data, that
information; the right to know that your personal information collected
for one purpose can’t then be misused by a company for a different
purpose; the right to have your information stored securely by companies
that are accountable for its use. We believe that there ought to be
some basic baseline protections across industries. So we're going to be
introducing this legislation by the end of next month, and I hope
Congress joins us to make the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights the law of
the land.

And finally, we’re taking
a series of actions to protect the personal information and privacy of
our children. Those of us with kids know how hard this can be. Whether
they are texting or tweeting, or on Facebook, or Instagram, or Vine, our
children are meeting up -- and they are growing up -- in cyberspace. It
is all-pervasive. And here at the FTC, you’ve pushed back on companies
and apps that collect information on our kids without permission.

And Michelle and I are
like parents everywhere -- we want to make sure that our children are
being smart and safe online. That's a responsibility of ours as
parents. But we need partners. And we need a structure that ensures
that information is not being gathered without us as parents or the kids
knowing it. We want our kids’ privacy protected -— wherever they sign
in or log on, including at school.

Now, the good news is
we’ve got new educational technologies that are transforming how our
children learn. You've got innovative websites and apps and tablets,
digital textbooks and tutors. Students are getting lessons tailored to
their unique learning needs. We want to encourage that information.
And it also facilitates teachers and parents tracking student progress
and grades in real-time. And all this is part of what our ConnectED
initiative is about -— connecting 99 percent of American students to
high-speed Internet so that we’re empowering students, teachers, and
parents, and giving them access to worlds they may never have had access
to before.

But we’ve already seen
some instances where some companies use educational technologies to
collect student data for commercial purposes, like targeted
advertising. And parents have a legitimate concern about those kinds of
practices.

So, today, we’re proposing
the Student Digital Privacy Act. That's pretty straightforward. We’re
saying that data collected on students in the classroom should only be
used for educational purposes -— to teach our children, not to market to
our children. We want to prevent companies from selling student data to
third parties for purposes other than education. We want to prevent any
kind of profiling that outs certain students at a disadvantage as they
go through school.

And we believe that this
won’t just give parents more peace of mind. We're confident that it
will make sure the tools we use in the classroom will actually support
the breakthrough research and innovations that we need to keep unlocking
new educational technologies.

Now, we didn't have to
completely reinvent the wheel on this proposal. Many states have
proposed similar legislation. California just passed a landmark law.
And I hope Congress joins us in this national movement to protect the
privacy of our children.

We won’t wait for
legislation, though. The Department of Education is going to offer new
tools to help schools and teachers work with tech companies to protect
the privacy of students. As of today, 75 companies across the country
have signed on to a Student Privacy Pledge. And among other things,
they’re committing not to sell student information or use educational
technologies to engage in targeted advertising to students.

Some of those companies
are here today. We want to thank you for your leadership. I want to
encourage every company that provides these technologies to our schools
to join this effort. It’s the right thing to do. And if you don’t join
this effort, then we intend to make sure that those schools and those
parents know you haven’t joined this effort.

So, this mission,
protecting our information and privacy in the Information Age, this
should not be a partisan issue. This should be something that unites
all of us as Americans. It’s one of those new challenges in our modern
society that crosses the old divides -- transcends politics, transcends
ideology. Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, everybody is
online, and everybody understands the risks and vulnerabilities as well
as opportunities that are presented by this new world.

Business leaders want
their privacy and their children’s privacy protected, just like
everybody else does. Consumer and privacy advocates also want to make
sure that America keeps leading the world in technology and innovation
and apps. So there are some basic, common-sense, pragmatic steps that
we ought to all be able to support.

And rather than being at
odds, I think that much of this work actually reinforces each other.
The more we do to protect consumer information and privacy, the harder
it is for hackers to damage our businesses and hurt our economy.
Meanwhile, the more companies strengthen their cybersecurity, the harder
it is for hackers to steal consumer information and hurt American
families. So we’ve got to all be working together in the same direction,
and I'm confident if we do we’ll be making progress.

We are the country that
invented the Internet. And we’re also the pioneers of this Information
Age -- the creators, the designers, the innovators. Our children are
leaving us in the dust, if you haven’t noticed. They’re connecting
and they’re collaborating like never before, and imagining a future we
can only dream of. When we Americans put our minds together and our
shoulder to the wheel, there’s nothing we can’t do. So I’m confident,
if we keep at this, we can deliver the prosperity and security and
privacy that all Americans deserve.

We pioneered the Internet,
but we also pioneered the Bill of Rights, and a sense that each of us as
individuals have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be
breached, whether by our government, but also by commercial interests.
And since we’re pioneers in both these areas, I'm confident that we can
be pioneers in crafting the kind of architecture that will allow us to
both grow, innovate, and preserve those values that are so precious to
us as Americans.

Thank you very much. And
thanks to the FTC -- for all the great work you do to protect the
American people.